Patraja: Difference between revisions

{{Infobox country

|alt_flag =          <!--alt text for flag (text shown when pointer hovers over flag)-->

|flag_border =        <!--set to no to disable border around the flag-->

|national_motto =    Ex Nihilo Aliquid

|englishmotto =        Something formed of Nothing

|royal_anthem =       

|other_symbol_type =  <!--Use if a further symbol exists, e.g. hymn-->

Patrajan (adjective)<br>

Patrajans (plural)

|leader_name1 = Marija Torenvoa

|area_rank =  

|area =              Amount of Pixels x 10 = Area in Sq Mi

|calling_code =      +981

|GDP_PPP=4,212,000 Vitaes|GDP_PPP_year=2028}}

Patraja is considered to have been founded as a conceptual area by the Latinic General Marcus Patrinius during an expedition to the South of the continent, wherein the general seceded from his kingdom to the north and formed his own Kingdom of Patraea. The artificially-constructed state soon fell to rampaging Slavic invasions to the nearby east, but the name had endured after the general's death in battle as the title of a local region in the area.

==History==

Patraja has generally been considered a black sheep of the Sarpedonian continent, continually attempting and failing to unify into one national state. With a famed history of both republicanism and monarchism, as well as experimental forms of governance and confederacy, Patraja has had an equal mixture of eras of development and unification along with eras of chaos and invasion.

Patraja was originally settled as a Latin-Slavic warground after the collapse of the short-lived Kingdom of Patraea. In this melting pot of aggressive warring areas and mixing tribes, the unique Latinic-Slavic culture of Patraja first emerged in peace during the Zanaeslav Agreements, or the Union of Peace, which lasted from 312 BC to 289 BC. This tribal agreement of union and confederacy was a general peace and customs agreement and began the first sightings of a unique Patrajan culture, with an increase in migration and intermixing between the native Slavic and immigrating Latin peoples. The northern sections of Patraja in particular, though sharing a distinctly-Latin lean, were the first to unify into what was considered a true Patrajan nation. This area, perhaps in accordance to this, also partook very little in the chaos that followed after the collapse of the Agreements. Through various Latin, or perhaps Slavic, provocations unknown to historians at this time, the Agreements collapsed into tribal anarchy once more, lasting from 289 BC to 260 BC. Not much is known about the early history of the Latins and Slavs within the southern Sarpedonian continent, and even less is known about the various details leading up to the first signs of organization, but after 260 BC, more clear signs of both Patrajan culture and governance emerge.

===The First Kingdom and Republic of Peoples [260 BC - 70 BC]===

In 260 BC, the Patrajan tribal anarchy seemed to have come to a halt for the last time in history. A tribal chief, likely from a northern section of the region, named Anaeron, managed to gain control over the former-Union tribal lands through a mixture of bribery and war. Many attribute this seemingly-quick and absurdly-large endeavor to the man's cutthroat political strategies, though not much is known. After the conquest of most of the preliminary areas of what is considered Patraja minor today, Anaeron formed the Kingdom of Patarija, which he ruled from 260 BC until his death in 235 BC. This period of time began what is generally referred to as the First Golden Age of Patraja, where the actual culture of classical Patrajan as many know it today was formed. With a rudimentary-but-secure border preventing further Latin migrations from disorganizing local Slavic groups, King Anaeoron promoted a vast amount of cultural interludes between the populations. Many historians today consider this to be one of the earliest observations of intentional eugenic actions and laws. Indeed, at the height of the push for cultural integration in 245 BC, a new set of decrees generally referred to by historians as the Marriages of Culture Laws, King Anaeron passed orders of a minimum number of inter-cultural marriages to be reached per year. At the height of these demands, an inter-cultural marriage rate of 15% was often demanded. Many historians accuse this action, along with other strange acts of tyranny, such as the ill-funded Anaeoronic Walls, as proof of a declining mental state in the first King in his later years. King Anaeron from old age and passed on his Kingdom in the first peaceful transition of power in Patraja towards his son, Maxin.

King Maxin very much followed in his father's footsteps, continuing the First Golden Age of cultural integration and nation-building. In 230 BC, as an early act in his rule, he centralized the rule of the Kingdom by forcefully merging various bordering tribes into singular Dukjels - precursors to Late Antiquarian and Medieval duchies - to be ruled by one man instead of many. Because of this strategy, the Maxinian legal system had a much better implementation than the Anaeoronic systems, and various laws were passed. In 228 BC, shortly after the completion of the reorganization of the Kingdom, Maxin ordered the relocation of resources from the Anaeoronic Walls to the new Maxinian Walls to the north, which were completed within three years of their start. These walls were highly effective, if crude, methods of keeping out persisting Latinic migrations. King Maxin died in early death in 210 BC due to wounds sustained in battle after a regular conflict with western tribal leaders, and passed away with no apparent heir. After an interlude period of near-anarchy in the Kingdom, a nephew named Proktrii was found as an heir to Maxin.

Taking the throne at only 17 years old, Proktrii instantly showed an exhibition for being the opposite of his predecessors. Raised in a Latin home, the new king always showed a favor to the Latinic settlers of the north of the nation, and even instituted controversial amendments to the Marriages of Culture Laws that favored Latin-headed marriages. This new court culture of clear bias and a more reckless attitude also led to a reported distraction from state affairs and a new focus on the benefits to the king. The remnants of the first royal castle of Patraja, unearthed for the first time in 2022 AC, show signs of construction around the period that would confirm that Proktrii nearly quadrupled the size of his primary realm during a very short period of time. According to rare eyewitness accounts of the time, such as those in the Tablets of Warenus, a visitor from the neighboring southern islands, the court culture of King Proktrii regularly engaged in more salacious and dramatic affairs such as orgies and drama than before. Though sexual exploits were of no surprise in any court at the time, many say that the situation in the Kingdom of Patarija took an even more extreme turn. By all evidence, King Proktrii exhibited a much looser and less focused rule than his uncle, and an unclear moral code that exhibited itself for the first, and last, time in public in 190 BC.

In 190 BC, King Proktrii raped a publicly-lauded courtier and administrator today known as being called Mariana. The Rape of Mariana by Proktrii was soon shown to the public by an unknown source, leading to widespread outrage and a martyrization of Mariana by the common classes of the kingdom. Within the year, mobs had regularly gathered, and force was being used on them when it was able. At the end of 190 BC, one of these mobs successfully stormed the royal castle and killed King Proktrii. The lineage of Anaeron is thought to have ended here, though some evidence of illegitimate children involving Proktrii still remain. From the years of 190 to 188-187 BC, the nation of Patarija descended into chaos once more. As chaos increased, historical records decreased, almost to the standards of the larger anarchy of the Latin Migration period. What is known, however, is that the conflicts of this time were much more massive and exhaustive than before.

Whereas previous boons of conquest were individual tribes, the creation of a Kingdom of Patarija had shown to local leaders that an entire nation could be won, or simply claimed, through conquest. Because of this, many battles were essentially fought to the death, and the local area of the former royal family was in a course of constant contention. It had seemed that whoever held the former royal realms could declare themselves King at any time. During this 2-3 year period, some reports say that there were about a dozen self-declared Kings of Patarija, with some existing at the same time as one another. After years of exhaustive conflict, which ravaged and opened up the nation to a variety of foreign intrusions, some form an armistice was reportedly agreed upon in 188-187 BC. From here, a small confederation of tribes informally referred to as the Patrajan Republic of Peoples was formed out of mainly-northern and central areas of the nation, dead-bent on a seemingly-impossible goal of a reunion of the Patrajan people. Whether this Republic of Peoples was a confederation of pragmatic manipulation by a few important leaders, or a genuinely-idealistic national union, is unknown. However, most historians tentatively describe this as the first era of democracy within Patraja.

From 188-187 BC to 180 BC, this Republic took up essentially all of the former-Patarijan lands belonging to the Kingdom. The most notable battle, taking place in the west in 181 BC, often referred to as the turning point of Patrajans as a people, was ironically held against a massive and unknown group of western invaders, famous at the time for a wish to expand fully into the devastated Patrajan areas. The current identity of the invasion force is either unknown or conflicting. Despite an outnumbered force, the Republic of Peoples successfully defended itself, taking heavy casualties but effectively dissuading a secondary invasion attempt due to the fierceness of the defense. The western border in which this battle took place is often referred to as the Western Reaches of Antiquarian and Medieval Patraja, though that western border has since increased past those bounds.

From 180 BC to 70 BC, Patraja existed as a slowly-unifying loose Republic, governed mainly by individual Konsals (an Old Patrajan term for Consul) which united various tribes under a single speakers banner. At most times in the Republic, there were a variety of Konsals competing for influence. During other, rarer times, particularly during conflict, there was a singular Konsal of all tribes, thought to be the national figurehead-leader of the time. Realistically, however, no national leadership ever rose forth until the Voting Measures of 145 BC.

In 70 BC, a rogue Konsal named Patrinus was elected and declared the new continuation of the first Kingdom of Patarija. Though not much is known about the strangely-swift and smooth process of this action, many scholars argue that a rudimentary system of legal proofs was used by Patrinus to declare the Kingdom a non-dead entity. Whether this was through the production of a newly-deceased heir or some obscure transitional document from the First Kingdom to the Republic of Peoples is unknown. In whatever direction this supposed proof took form, the Konsal's actions flew by the antiquated enforcement systems in an easy manner. Some reports of the time indicate a pro-republican rebellion or two, but all were put down quite easily. The new King Patrinus had redeclared the Kingdom of Patarija successfully - for the sake of simplification and de-facto notation, however, this kingdom shall be referred to as the Second Kingdom of Patarija. King Patrinus had declared himself king at only the age of 35.

With a new kingdom thoroughly secured by 69 BC, King Patrinus made himself known as one of the greater late-pagan medieval kings quite quickly. With a quickly-centralizing rank of loyal Konsals (still called so for the sake of both continuity and tradition), Patrinus was quick to preserve some precedent of the Republic of Peoples through a religious manner. Forming the office of ''Repraesentativic Deoricom'', or the "Representative of the Gods", Patrinus effectively tied local Patrajan religiosity to the state and monarchy itself through an essentially-decorative title bestowed upon one of the Konsals through an elected assembly of all nobles. Despite the relatively-small impact the actual title had on politics, however, it strengthened the pagan character of the nation immensely, and found itself as a useful office that transitioned even past the christianization of the nation.

In 66 BC, King Patrinus also made moves to quell local unrest, and to further bring the nation to a more modern, developed stage, constructing vast amount of roads and establishing what was at the time called "an untold amount" of tax offices, sheriff's buildings, and royal armories and barracks across the nation. It seemed that within a single decade, the previously-rural and decentralized nation of Patraja was becoming a late antiquity-era gold standard for how to run a nearly-feudal society. Already, the Konsal's workload was beginning to be too heavy to bear - particularly with royalist-ordered expansions - and Konsal's were already delegating powers to new ''Konsalis Minorisae'', or "small" and "minor" Konsal's. This system, as told by Professor Markin Totravki at the Institute of Patrajan National History, was "essentially medievally-monarchical in its structure and enforcement, republican in naming and tradition, and deeply ancient in religiosity and worship." A unique system, it would seem, that paid dividends.

At age 40, in 24 BC, King Avinnic passed what was officially called the Religious Enforcement Articles. As Representative to the Gods, Avinnic had essentially reformed the previously-ceremonial institution to a genuine enforcement and regulatory force in charge of religion within Patraja. With representatives sent to each Konsal, even the Minor Konsals, the influence of the new office could not be understated. This de-facto change in religious enforcement was made de-jure in 24 BC with the articles. Within the year, severe punishment, even burnings at stakes, occurred in the name of a centralizing Patrajan religion. Though some Konsals notably wrote in uncovered private journals of their disdain for the practice, from the "peak years" of the articles, from 24 BC to 14 BC, the religion of Patraja had been strengthened in its loyalty to the monarchy and to the king. A new Royal Cult of Kennonia was emerging, seeing the Second Kingdom as the essential, perfected incarnation of Patraja as a nation. Compared to the state of the Republic of Peoples, this wasn't essentially hard to see as being believable, but crucial errors were made in the isolationist policy of Avinnic's severe zealousness, and the country's stalwart attitude; it had become unfathomably unpopular. Moreso with the nations influenced by the newly-forming proto-religion of Jesus Christ.

In 0 BC/0 AC, the death and reported rebirth of Christ had a massive impact on the world. The aging King Avinnic, aged 64, first heard of the news of the formation of several organized sects around the man weeks after it became known. According to reports captured even by servants of the man, the king was flown into a blind rage. Whether or not King Avinnic knew the potential impact of a new, uniform, international religion on his religiously-centralized and defined governance was unknown, but his actions after seemed to be ones of a man in a rage to keep the crown. Hours after the reports of an essentially-united religious front of Christians, King Avinnic drafted the Second Articles of Religion, banning Christianity from the state and populace to degree unknown even to the first Articles' enforcement. Hundreds were killed until the death of King Avinnic at age 70, in the year 6 AC. Continuing with the supposed tradition of the House of Kennonia, Avinnic gave the Second Kingdom of Patarija to his zealous grandson over his own, son. The new King Valerijin is known as the final king of a pagan Kingdom of Patarija. Despite the infrastructure set up by his grandfather and his own continued zealous fights against Christianity, King Valerijin received continued reports of spreading Christian thought from the years of 6-16 AC. Punishments were doled out, but all that was done was to force Christians underground.

The most particular spread of Christianity occurred in Western port-towns across the Pelian Channel, where word from neighboring continents and nations spread quickly. Things escalated in 18 AC as a public and unafraid Church of Patrajan Christians was declared in the same western regions. Though officially a collection of believers, the armament and clearly-defined boundaries of the CPC made it more of a proto-statist entity in direct opposition to the pagan Second Kingdom. In 19 AC, as the CPC spread in both number and territory across the western coasts, King Valerijin declared unofficial war against what he notably described as "a pretended-area of spineless heretics." The CPC's organization and near-statehood, meanwhile, made it more of a proto-crusader state than a defensive commission of churches. Led by several local theological rulers, it can perhaps also be described as one of the first Christian theologically-based governments. The Christianization of Patraja, taking place between 0 AC and 92 AC, therefore almost directly correlated with the Churchhood-Royalist War, taking place from 19 AC to 32 AC. Patraja's Christianization, as described by foreign historical specialist Matthew Welling, was "a religious war of total conversion and total victory, rather than a spread of ideas...Patraja's origins as a nation of Latinic religiosity and Slavic toughness perhaps even started out...after the total war for religion so early in its history."

In 32 AC, former King Valerijin was brought to a tribunal of rebel Konsals, Minor Konsals, vital Christian leaders, and several theologians, and was given a choice of either death at the cross, or to renounce, repent, and spend the rest of his days within a rotating list of dungeons. Valerijin chose the former, and was burnt in public days later to a crowd of thousands.

After the essential collapse of the leadership of the Second Kingdom, the swearing of loyalty and conversion of several Konsal's from the old regime, the Church of Patrajan Christians as it was known from 18 AC collapsed in on itself. Though the country was stable, with a semi-functioning provisional government only really capable of meager tax collection and border enforcement, decisions had to be made quickly about the formation of a new Christian state. It was not, according to sources, just a matter of creating a strong state, but a matter of the conversion of the whole nation. Patraja, at its core countryside, was still a deeply-pagan nation, and revolts in an adapted guerilla-style from those areas would not bode well for the organization of a new state. Some from the time, including a local self-proclaimed Cardinal Parin, argued that "if action is not taken within the year, we will be in a slow-war against the pagans for another century."

Action was, however, taken. After much deliberation, the Church and local authorities had agreed upon a creation of a new kingdom, for the sake of continuity with the positional traditions of the Patrajan state, and to conform to the expectations of the public. The transformation of Patraja to a fully-theologian state was briefly considered, but quickly shot down by the wishes of former Konsals to keep their centuries-old powers over regional affairs. In 33 AC, the public was informed of the creation of the Kingdom of Patraja - the first use of the now-modern term for the nation. Though the name is different, the title of the Third Kingdom will be used for brevities sake.

Weeks later, the public was told news of the selection of a new King; a relatively obscure war hero whose original name, in one way or another, is unknown to this day. The man took the moniker of King Paul I of the Kingdom of Patraja, and was coronated in late 33 AC. The third, Christian kingdom of the Patrajans had begun.

The second and perhaps most-vital order of affairs for the new kingdom was the Christianization of Patraja. Though nearly all major cities and towns were vastly Christian by this point, whether through force or genuine mass conversion, the countryside remained a staunch pagan area of resistance. The temptation to King Paul I was, once more, presented as an easy religious war of persecution. However, a softer approach was taken. The newly-refurbished tax system was put to work; pagans were taxed at higher rates, for more actions, and across more areas. The deployment of standing minor armies were used; pagans were often drafted into low-level positions, possibly to simply die in battle if needed, but constantly surrounded by pastors. A campaign of effortless propaganda was also put into place; Patraja had Christian conversion missions be sent into its own territory. This strategy of the use of soft power rather than military persecution paid off in dividends, but not entirely in Paul I's life. This new formation of soft power was observed by Paul's descendants, Paul II and Constian I, until the eventual conversion of Patraja ended in about 92 AC. This "soft conversion," with seemingly no true beginning or end, was brought to end by King Constian I at his deathbed in 103 AC, where most laws against paganism were allowed to be conveniently forgotten, and all missions of conversion slowly defunded and stopped by his successor, his nephew, Paul III. Anti-pagan persecution and missions still occurred, naturally, and the practice of Patrajan pagan religion itself continued even to this day, but by the start of the 2nd Century, the religious conflict of Patraja was allowed to be quietly forgotten and shelved to history in what was then often called "The times before God."

''Did your country ever have a period of significant decline or internal struggle?''

===Fifth era===

==Military==

''How large is your country's military? Is it large but poorly equipped or small and elite? Does your country have a martial tradition?''

[[Category:IXWB]]

[[Category:Patraja]]

[[Category:Countries]]

[[Category:Countries in Sarpedon]]